


Huge puppy eyes, knew how to use a rifle at age 11.

by sadfuckboy



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Best Friends, Gen, Growing Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 23:28:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21145001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadfuckboy/pseuds/sadfuckboy
Summary: will buyers kept his soul even after everything was about him. Stayed humble in his pain while holding the whole world on his prepubescent shoulders. Cuts on his legs bled down to his socks but he never kneeled like Atlas.That’s the boy that was left behind after recess.When the bell rings he turns to see a flow of back hair running away from him. Breathing, toes of his dirty shoes touching and hands holding a football, but at this point seeing Mike do this didn’t sting anymore. He’d grown accustomed.Running after him it was.





	Huge puppy eyes, knew how to use a rifle at age 11.

**Author's Note:**

> basically.  
Will is in love with Mike, nothing is like it used to be. he doesn't know how to change anything he wants to change and stop he change of things he wants to keep.

No 10 year old is scared to grow up. All of them crave it like sugar. All the things you can get by just waiting for the time pass and your legs getting longer. It sounds like god bringing good things only.  
The scary part creeps on you without realising, until one day you realise that growing up changes something else other than your body. The world around warps into something unrecognizable and it’s fully out of your control. A new kind of powerlessness.

Mike was in love with Eleven. Will Buyers realized the friend group that was the only thing he’d ever known, was but a shadow of itself. Scattered like the shards of a fallen plate. To a social group he’d been an essential part of, Dungeon Master and the martyr, he was now the one doomed to be second choice. 

Fingers covered in cold raindrop he holds the handlebars of his bike while waiting for the others. After school tradition that only he seems to value anymore. Kids leaving school pass him from all directions and the air is ripe with multiple sounds and fall wind. In the midst of the mass it was hard to seek out anyone but Will still stared to the main entrance like a statue. 

He doesn’t know why he does it. Considering how much it has turned to hurt him. The picture of Mike holding El’s hand once again pictured in the doorframe. 

They walk towards him waving and he answers. When Mike lets go of El to unlock his bike it all feels old for a moment. He hastles with the chain and vocally mutters about the old lock. How all he got was passed down things! New Nikes in his feet. Will actually found peace with Mike’s newly find vocal displeasement with small inconveniences. Finally they’d been safe from danger so long that little things started to matter again. He touches the back of his neck out of habit and regrets it.  
“What are you thinking, will?” He hadn’t even realised he’d been staring to nothingness until El surprised him by standing really close. 

“oh, ah. Nothing really. sorry.” El stares at him just a little longer than is considered normal, almost like she knows it’s a part of her charm. But lets go of it and starts to speak in a really excited manner. “Did you like your biology class? What did you talk about?”

El had been allowed to the same school as them after Hopper realized the multileveled damage of his trauma controlled actions, but was forced to go on a class lower than the others because of the lack of previous education. She was also enlisted only unofficially. Not allowed in class photos or nationwide tests and competitions, but very much to live as part of her kind. Young teenagers. 

She loved to talk about school, obsessed with the concept of studying not being something enriching her value as a test subject, but as a means of making her life more broad. She’d first been really struggling with the social side, but nowadays moved with experience in the fuzz. Max was really good for her. Strong, opinionated, respected. The red little girl made all those aspects shine outward from El. 

Will loved school too. The academic part. The social side had proven to be impossible for him to mingle with. No matter the time pass, the growth of kids, the amount of status his friends got, how his kindness never withered despite his tears, it never got better for him. It was always being the last one to get an hello, being pushed in the halls a bit stronger than as an accident, stolen pens and silence when he came close.

He tried to talk about biology. They’d tackled heritage and genes in the simple way they were allowed in their age. El had her mother’s eyes. Will had his mother’s chronic anxiety.  
Despite their complete difference in character, Will liked to talk with El. After knowing her for years, you learn to read her. See past her previous lack of socialisation into the amount she had learned and how much she always aimed to be kind. She had no concept for stupid or smart people, nerdy or athletic. She only knew kind and evil.

Mike was similar to her in the sense that they both were innocent. Saved by the inherent and genetic kindness in him, but doomed to be so unreachable due to the obliviousness his best qualities created. He was brave, he was emotional and raw. He was loved by everyone who knew him, and really strongly and vocally too. Will burnt himself on that sun constantly. Getting accidentally ignored in the hassle, stared for too long in confusion. Realizing the fault of his own dramatic emotions in the situation. Deciding to make the shadows into his home. There were so many things in his relationship to Mike Wheeler that he didn’t want to discuss.

“Are you coming today, Will?” Their conversation was broken by man of the hour himself, who rose from the bike that was still locked. Answering was a weirdly taxing but Will nodded with a surprisingly stable “Jeah, I am, Jonathan will probably drive me.” 

“Awesome.” Mike looked Will in the eyes with such honesty that was so characterful for him, yet always so sweetly absurd and painful. He smiled, and Will couldn’t do anything but smile back. Every time...  
Mike tried to be subtle with the way he pulled El’s sleeve and avoided eye contact, but no one could have missed the subtle little click of the lock opening on its own. 

They started to walk their bikes from the school yard. Wet leaves under their colored sneakers and red in their fingertips. Will took a few quicker steps to get closer, took a breath in and coughed before opening his mouth. “My mom was wondering if i could stay at Dustin’s house or something tonight. Do you know when he gets off from radio club?” 

Mike shrugged his shoulders and without turning back to look at him, without even thinking about it at all: “You can sleep at my house. My mom was already asking if anyone’s staying, but El’s going to Max’s.”  
She nodded affirmingly and looked straight at Will. “Girl time.” 

His head took a few steps back. His feet almost stopped their stroll. Mike probably hadn’t even realized, but Will hadn’t been in a sleepover with him in ages. The whole night became a lot bigger deal now. On its own, it’s not like it was weird. They still were best friends. But there was a storm inside Will’s heart and mind that wasn’t accustomed to things still being like the old times. Will’s control over his own feelings was based on ignoring and staying stale. Not facing Mike in an intimate and closed situation.

Still no part of him was able to even make excuses to not come. His body held an agressive party while his brain quivered. Best for him in this situation? Forgotten to the wind in seconds. “That’d be nice. I’ll tell my mom when I get home. Thanks.”  
Mike turned to smile at him. And Will answered, but with the extra spice of shy blinking and quickly moving to look at something else. The little leaves on the ground pouring over each other, connecting and separating over and over again.

\--

It was just him and him. Will and Mike. Trash on the floor, blankets staged over sofa armrests and pillows stacked to room corners. Drawings and figures shattered around the ground. Tables full of empty snack bowls. 

The door after El and Max had just closed. Will was tense as ever.  
For a long while in the past he had trusted Mike the most, and could ask him to stay with him when his mom or brother couldn’t. Trusted him with the knowledge of his outer blisters, like the permanent bad blood circulation, and damaged insides, like the incurable sense of dread. But nowadays asking him to wait for him to put on sneakers felt too much. And now he was here, dealing with all of that. And the non-ending pain in his heart from realized emotions that could never be actualized. 

Watching him put the last miniatures in their box with unedited calmness while Will was too afraid to move from the sofa he was sitting, highlighted how far they’d grown from each other. From that inseparable duo that could read each other's thoughts from a few glances alone.

Click of the figure case made Will flinch. Mike rose from the floor and put it on its place in the high shelf. Despite being so overgrown the other boys were jealous of his lanky stick legs, he still had to stand on his tip toes. Will watched in pure horror first the striped socks covering trembling ankles, then the visibly worn out, beige girls’ trousers passed down from Nancy. When he got to the messed black hair almost touching shoulders, a pair of brown eyes turned towards him and almost scared all his walls down.

When he was unable to say anything, he saw something unexpectedly troubled linger in Mike’s face. It hid quickly when he opened his mouth.

“You wanna go to sleep? We can make your bed already if you’re tired?” Gears forcing themselves to turn.. eyes staring then moving again. Will didn’t know why it took him so long to realize he was spoken to, considering how hyperfixated he was on this situation and this situations alone. 

“No.. No I’m good. Sorry. I mean, if i look tired.” 

It felt like after months Mike actually looked at him. And it wasn’t in the way Will had dreamed, for there was just worry in his eyes. Quess the world just never took weight from his back.  
“I don’t want to go to sleep.” Will muttered out like he was talking to a crush. Or whatever. Next sentence running on top of the first really embarrassingly. “Not for a long time.”  
His chest hurt awkwardly, out of proportionally like hell. Unsure where he always got the unrelatable calmness. Maybe it was the trauma. He only managed to catch a glimpse of Mike, who luckily seemed to relax from words alone. 

“Good. Good! um. so. Wanna eat or like. Guess we’ve played enough for tonight.. Do you want to watch TV? um-” “Mike.” Chuckling first time in forever, smiling for once, even though still spiraling, Will pulled the blanket from the floor and stood up. “We can just talk? like, hang out.” Mike watched him in the eyes when he smiled and pulled his hair behind his ear. 

-

Pillow fort, it felt so calming yet so unnatural for two boys almost 15 years of age. Mike took the floor completely, laying in all the glory Will was so uncomfortable with. Jumper with sleeves too long and cross stitched teddies on the chest swallowing his whole being. Next to him, Will with stiff legs, back against the cold wall and toes pointing to the ceiling. Fabric rustling to pieces ever so slowly between his fingers, but he was more calm.. maybe? He had expected to feel cornered, but they started with topics that didn’t make him shake. It also seemed like there were no walls up from Mike. Pale, black haired, admirably simple and could be read like a book. When the talk went on he started to get his gears really rolling. With every dumb comment the thread between grew a tiny inch back together.

It was dumb, they talked about comics and superpowers, but it was better than it had been for so long. Mike’s body shook as he giggled. “Ok. Ok. Hulk?” 

Will’s nausly teen voice, humming in his throat like a trademark. “What about Hulk? I’d pass for sure.” 

“Huh?? But he’s the Hulk!” Mike gestured to the air with stick fingers and square palms. Heat of the moment and he glanced at Will. A smirk in white teeth but something else behind his eyes. “He’s so powerful he can’t be stopped! Imagine all that strength!” 

Mike’s hair had fallen on Will’s calve. Burning his skin. He ignored it. “Isn’t Hulk’s point like.. the fact that there’s a monster inside Bruce Banner.” Rolled his electric watch on his hand. “And he’s afraid it’ll get out because it can destroy everything from around him.” Quick ruffle of hair over stress. Was an honest reading a weird thing to say.

Mike rose into a sitting position. 

What. To Will it felt so unpromted after he’d been lured to the sense of casualty of the situation. But now it was Mike’s back to him and the scary quiet of a moment. The only Byers in the room was just confused at this point. Not sure what was going on. He pressed his nail into the cuticle of his left index finger. “Mike-”

“Will-” They had both started talking at the same time. Losing momentum on the moment their vavelings crashed. And it was silent again. Neither of them heard the AC or the car driving past the basement window. Both took a breath. Will managed but an “um..” but Mike had a dialog ready, like what he was about to address had been written in his head long time ago.

“Will is there something going on? Is there something I should know?” Why didn’t he turn around. He sounded so absurdly emotional.  
Now will was but a deer in the headlights. Eyes big and exhausted under heavy eyebrows. Will did not want to discuss this. Let out unconditional emotions he was too afraid to write even into his diary. 

“I thought it was nothing but now you seem so sad. And we aren’t like we used to be.” Finally he turned and his brows where so deep in a frown his nose was red. He brushed the tips of his hair in anxiety even though the characterful determination never wavered from his face.

“What do you..” “I never see you anymore.. I know a lot has happened and all but I didn’t think that we would separate like this. I don’t know.. I just don’t want to take this weird air anymore.” Mike rolled his legs from behind him and sat on them. Knees pointing at Will like fingers at Jesus. 

“Mike. I’m really sorry. it’s just..” Will tried to just, hush. Make it stop before it would go to that. Into things he had just moments ago been sure he’d take to the grave without ever hurting everyone with them, But Mike was but a flood gate of repressed emotions. He was never good at holding in. Always good at flowing over.

“No please stop saying you’re sorry all the time. I’m sorry. I’ve only been with El. I have not known how to handle this. I’m a bad friend.” Now he didn’t even look at Will anymore. He palmed his hair and gestured with his other hand. In seconds overcome by emotion and blaming everything on himself like he was the messiah.  
Red on his cheeks popped out in the white and Will broke down so fast he felt nausea and hell on his shoulder. Being able to emotionally distance himself from Mike wheeler had always been but a tripping halluzination. If eleven held a hurricane inside her because she was too much for this weak weak world, Will was caught inside a typhoon because this world was way too much for him. Mike was the eye. Last drop of real life.

“Mike I think that I might not like girls.” Splurring the words. Hating himself for always martyring his own soul for the salvation of Mike Wheeler. He wasn’t even crying and there was Will, blood dripping from the heart he held in his hands.

“What?” 

Will just stared. It took Mike a moment. Intense staring while he took all his energy to understand. Like it meant the world to him. When the weight of how hard it had been for Will to say that, and why it was so, sinked in on him. He seemed to fall into deep dread. 

“Will.. Will I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you couldn’t tell me that. I.. You’re my best friend and nothing would ever change that. Will, I..” On that moment, Will started to cry. He wished that it was because of the intensity of the moment, but he was crying because he was in love with Mike and couldn’t stop it.

“Will what’s wrong??” Mike’s voice pitched up and he palmed the tears pouring on Will’s cheeks. He moved his hand first on Will’s face, then arms and pressed slightly. Boy from an affectionate home. Re-assuring he was there, but it just made Will feel worse. Hate himself more. 

“No. No you wouldn’t want to be with me if I told you.” He grasped Mike’s wrist and moved his hand away from his. “I’m sorry Mike, I.. I need air. I’m sorry, it’s not you.. I swear it’s not. I just.. I can’t. I’m sorry.” He gasped out his unfinished sentences and thoughts with a painfully high voice. Crawling out of the pillow fort with chronically shaking legs and hands. After everything he’d gone through he still didn’t have power for this. This was too much. 

When he rose to his full height he didn’t know where to go. Down in the basement he had no place to run. Left inside the concrete with his buried emotions. His mind went into full shut down. In all his might he tried to process, but it was just pulling the mover without it never sparking flame. 

Mike rose from behind him, making Will physically withdrawn a few meter away from him. Now his eyes too dripped blue. “Will-”

“Mike.” Grit in his teeth made Mike visibly drop. He looked so scared. Not of Will, but their relationship and the turn it was going to take in moments only. Posture completely turned into himself from being so scared to make things worse. His voice was but a whisper. “I just… wanted to say that we don’t have to talk about this anymore. just please don’t get out into the rain or something. I’m sorry if I hurt you.” Nasly, scared little kid, voice breaking both from puberty and heartache. Lanky legs turned inwards. Hand on his arm he managed just a little peek at Will. 

Will let out a tremling sigh. Hearing that made him feel worse and he wanted to destroy something because of it. He hated that his silence and aims to protect the one thing he cared about had turned to do nothing but hurt. An impossible, smothering situation and self reflection. He hated it. And on top of that, his body didn’t accept going back to his previous coping mechanisms of suffocating everything he felt. Telling him the pain would only become worse, until it’d be too bad to ever be possible to cope with. 

Emotionally self-cornered, he straightened his back. And cracked open his chest. “It’s not just.. “not girls” i like. It’s you, Mike.” He shook his head, taking a collecting break. Relaxing his hands and letting them fall to his sides. “I’m in love with you.”

Understandably taken back by the emotion and feelings he wasn’t avare of, Mike didn’t say anything. Not that he really had the time before Will continued. 

“And I know you don’t return these feelings. It’s pretty redundant for me to even confess this. But I am too done with this weird air between us.” Connecting their gazes and looking at Mike, hopefully conveying that he really meant everything. Please, take a hammer and start fixing this bridge.

Will breathed heavy, staring at Mike who opened his mouth and then closed it. Looking at him, apologetic. Will took it as a chance to just flow bleed over like a fountain. “And you don’t have to answer. I just, I also want back what we had. So I’m being honest with you.  
This is all of me.” 

Sucking in a deep breath, he realised something unexpected. Ignoring Mike for a moment. Instead of feeling nothing but dread. He was cathartic. Like he had been freed from the pain of being alone. Confessed his soul and now it was in the hands of the judge. The 171cm long straight boy in front of him, whom he loved like no one else in the world, no matter what.

“Will I..” Mike however looked so concerned and concentrated on what he was going to say that Will felt bad. But he waited silently on what he wanted to express. 

Mike was clearly only now learning that he had the capability to hurt others, even when he didn’t want to. It was the scariest thing in his life. Will saw the struggle it clearly took him to think and reflect, try to find the right words. Worse than any inhuman monster that could only rip his body, not his understanding of himself. He started slow with heart pounding. “It’s true I can’t return those feelings like that. But I love you. You are one of the most important people in my life and the moments I’ve thought I have lost you have been the worst of my life. I don’t want to lose you ever again.”

When Will saw that the other boy was too scared to even look at him, he felt every other thing wash away from his mind and down his back. He closed the distance between them and raised his hand to rest on Mike’s arm. Hoping it would be enough to convey his acceptance. Mike lifted his head in surprise. When he saw the smile covering Will’s face, he first mimicked it out of muscle memory, but after seeing the other boy’s eyes, his whole face bloomed in relief and love. It was wild, but Will felt that they finally understood each other again. 

When they hugged, Mike hunched down to get as close as possible and Will held on so tight Mike couldn’t breathe. Their heads with the same ridiculous haircut smacked together in the clumsy show of affection, making both of them slightly whine and giggle into each other’s shoulders.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if the end wasn't so fulfilling. it's hard to make it sting because the emotional highpoint is him coming out, and the end is just the stabilised, healing end product.
> 
> hopefully this isnt full of too many messy mistakes. i haven't written in ages. If you want to leave feedback id love it!
> 
> follow my tumblr @ojamies
> 
> also the edits that inspired me to do this:  
https://youtu.be/bC7vMmT2rHo  
https://youtu.be/LglZxrhmOlg


End file.
